Latinos are ready for their Kodak moments
AS an exercise in pre-Oscar schmoozing, the event was not so unusual: the heaping sushi platters, the sweaty crush of deal-makers and their glammed-up significant others, the occasional bona-fide celebrity pretending to be inconspicuous (Hello, Ian McShane).
But as an exercise in inter-studio cooperation, the party this month at the Sofitel was no garden-variety fiesta. For one thing, it's rare during the cutthroat frenzy of Oscar season for three distributors (Paramount, Universal and Picturehouse, in this case) to band together to celebrate and promote their artists.
Even more notable was the party's subtext: the emergence of Mexican and Latin American filmmaking talent as one of the most potent new forces in Hollywood. (The bash likely was the first ever held for multiple Oscar nominees to feature a live mariachi band.)
This phenomenon goes beyond last year's striking achievements of the Mexican directors being toasted at the Sofitel -- Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu ("Babel"), Guillermo del Toro ("Pan's Labyrinth") and Alfonso Cuaron ("Children of Men") -- whose movies have been collecting awards by the bushel. The soiree was a tacit acknowledgment of the dynamic new Latino film colony that's blossoming on once-inhospitable Hollywood back lots.
"It's still very much in its infancy, but clearly you see indications that it's being developed," says Manny Gonzalez, vice president and managing director of Hill Holliday Hispanic/abece, a Miami-based ad agency that specializes in the Latino market. Hollywood's new Latino enclave not only testifies to the amount of talent coming from Mexico and other Latin countries, Gonzalez says, but to the creative freedom and the resources that U.S. pop culture can offer, which "just simply don't exist in Mexico."
Besides Inarritu and Del Toro, both of whom have been living and working in Hollywood for years, the growing Spanish-speaking/bilingual community centered in Los Angeles includes director Sergio Arau ("A Day Without a Mexican"), the Mexican actresses Ana Claudia Talancon (HBO's "Whitney"), Ana de la Reguera ("Nacho Libre") and Sandra Echeverria (star of the telenovela "Marina"), and the Oscar-nominated Mexican American director of photography Rodrigo Prieto ("Brokeback Mountain," "Babel").
